An Englishman webbing in Wine Country

Reading an interesting post by Mike Arrington on Techcrunch today, basically, he is sick to death of other press, blogs and people breaking embargo’s. I can understand this, it takes time to construct a well thought out and well researched intellectual post, when given an embargo, the journalist or blogger is given a time to actually release the story. Of course, this story is not so hot if someone breaks the embargo to grab the “exclusive”.

I had an experience with PR Newswire a few weeks back, who advised me to distribute a press release on a Saturday – why I have no idea, it got a shocking response, maybe linked to by 50 splogs. Fact is, I am never using an online PR company to distribute my Press Releases again, have zero ROI on them and frankly, in the main the releases are presented on scraping sites and barely touch the journalists that would find the story newsworthy.

From now, I will post the releases on here, link them to Twitter, Friend Feed and Fuel all my friends this link on fuelmyblog and simply see what happens, I have enough Journalists and bloggers on those sites following me. As Robert Scoble commented on that Techcrunch post “If I were in PR I’d just Twitter the news, link to a blog explaining it..”.

So here is Fuelmyblog’s latest press release with a great reference from The King of Shaves boss, Will King.

FUELMYBLOG HELPS BRANDS ENGAGE WITH SOCIAL MEDIA COMMUNITY

Fuelmyblog.com, the global social network for bloggers, has launched a service aimed at bringing well-known brands closer to its customers and the blogging community.

Fuelmyblog allows bloggers to promote their own blogs for free by networking and recommending others on the site by rating them. It also hosts a community written blog, competitions, interviews and other benefits.

Now Fuelmyblog has launched a product review service linking well known brands with bloggers and a major social media platform.

Fuelmyblog Director Kevin Dixie said: “More and more people are turning to the Internet for product reviews with virtual trust taking over that of family and friends.”

Fuelmyblog believes that in the current economic climate, online is the most cost effective route to marketing a brand or product and practically eliminates the need for expensive campaigns.

Reaching out to bloggers is an ideal way to embrace social media, create online buzz and grow a brand online. By using Fuelmyblog, direct contact to the bloggers is available and provides a trusted source with a strong relationship.

Kevin Dixie said: “Companies working with Fuelmyblog simply select blogs to work with on a campaign, the bloggers have opted-in to receive and review products or test services.

“The products are then sent directly to the blogger with some company background to test and then write an honest review based upon their findings. The blogger is not paid for the review and simply keeps the goods. This ensures there are high levels of trust with the bloggers readers and web surfers as the reviews are based on true experience , we do not tell them to be positive.”

The King of Shaves* are running a blogger relations campaign asking Fuelmyblog’s top bloggers to test its new Azor razor.

King of Shaves CEO and founder Will King said: “As a company we are always looking at innovation in our products and how we engage with our customers. I have my own blog and immediately saw the potential of the Fuelmyblog campaign. The feedback we have had on the blogs involved has been terrific.”

*King of Shaves won the 2008 ‘Best Company’ award at the Real Business & CBI ‘Growing Business’ awards.

– Ends –

Feel free to pass this on, blog it, write about it. We think it is great news for any brand trying to launch a new product or even reignite old products. We are also offering restaurant and hotel reviews on blogs. Remember, as we already have the relationships with the bloggers, you won’t pay huge PR fees or have random people leaving messages on blog posts begging to promote your products..

After all the hoohaa about Ross and Brand, now Moyles, it strikes me that the BBC has lost control. I just clicked on the international BBC site and am convinced they have lost the plot.

I understand the BBC feel it needs to make money out of its overseas online viewers, a simple, simple solution would be to offer BBC iPlayer to those outside the UK for a small monthly subscription say £5 per month, but no, that is just far too easy. For those that don’t know, you are unable to access iPlayer from outside the UK.

What the BBC decided to do was to put some adverts on the site. This started off with very discrete 468×60 sized adverts showing animated National Geographic links, very soft and pleasing on the eye, that was pre-creditcrunch.

Now, they have a huge advert on the right hand side of the homepage, I don’t have a problem with adverts at all. But I can’t understand who these adverts are targeting, how on Earth do they expect to make money from these ad’s? I mean, who is buying Rolex watches right now?? Surely a paid advert with a rev share would be better given the traffic the BBC generates?

From the time I entered the Naval Academy at age seventeen I have been privileged and honored to serve my country.

Throughout my years of service, I’ve been faced with challenges where I could have taken the easy way out and given up. But I’m an American and I never give up. Instead, I choose to show courage and stand up and fight for the country I love. Today, I am asking you to stand with me and to fight for our country’s future.

Our country faces enormous challenges and our next president must be ready to lead on day one. My lifetime of experience has prepared me to lead our great nation. I’m prepared to bring solutions to our economic challenges, bring our troops home in victory and improve our nation’s healthcare system.

Time and time again, my country has saved my life and I owe her more than she has ever owed me. I have chosen to show my gratitude through a life of service to our country and tomorrow, you will have a choice before you.

I humbly ask you to make the choice that will allow me to serve my country a little while longer by casting your vote to elect me as your next President of the United States.

Finally, I ask that you never forget that much has been sacrificed to protect our right to vote. We must never forget those Americans who, with their courage, with their sacrifice, and with their lives, have protected our freedom. It is my great hope that you will exercise your right to vote as an American tomorrow.

I thank you for your kind support, your dedication to our cause, and most importantly I thank you for your vote.

For those of you reading this, it is tough for me to write, however, the secret I had been planning has been shelved, due to the recession and incompetence. I had planned to host a tour of the UK (then USA) in theblogbus. The bus was to be provided and supported by a World leading transport company, we hoped to visit every major city and explain just how blogging and social media can help the general public. The challenges were huge but the coverage fuelmyblog would have gained would have been enormous. All users would have benefitted. We had signed up a couple of well known celeb’s, the Government, some huge online companies and two of the World’s largest technology companies.

Unfortunately, after spending three to four solid months on the project, the company pulled out at the last minute. This has let a handful of global companies down. Thankfully, the contacts at these organisations are keen to continue working with me and fuelmyblog and I will revisit the tour idea shortly, with someone able to deliver.

For the corporate, I suspect this was a project that the employees probably felt they had to put time into, the only person really understanding the value was the board member that signed it off. In any case, I have had a large portion of my working year put aside, the costs are huge both in a personal, financial and business level. It was set to be a fantastic event, it still will be, only next time, I will choose the company wisely, I want to work with a company that understands the internet, the value of meeting the public (their customers) and the value of 5m unique visitors per day – even if the tour is not part of their bread and butter.

Ok back to fuelmyblog. There are plenty of products to test out now, one to note, the King of Shaves Azor, we are hoping to tie up a lot of companies over the next few weeks to ensure the bloggers get a flow of great products. We are also bringing out a new feature very shortly, this will be very exciting for us and hopefully enable our users and friends to interact more on the site.

Sorry to have been away for a while, things have been busy here, trying to catch up 🙂

Mike Butcher meets Ben Huh – I can haz a knackered Mike (he just finished Runaround at this point)

Here’s to the next event – although I am still thinking Mike should def run a Crackerjack version – best pitches get to hold cabbages – most cabbages win.

And then finally back home, this damn iphone is not picking up but..look at the ceiling in the plane, those two white rectangles are for mobile phones, the left says “turn off mobile” on the right says something like “mobile can be used”..imagine, a plane with mobile phones…urrgghh.

Many many people face the same problem using Firefox and Internet Explorer, you click on a YouTube video, it starts, two seconds later, finished. Or rather, it stops. If your YouTube video stops after two seconds, this tip is for you..

I have seen many many people say that you need to go back to previous restore point, change config or DNS settings, delete programs, upgrade drivers, buffer problems, change start-up settings, restart PC or blah blah blah..forget it. You do not need to do anything so drastic…

So your YouTube video freezes after 2 seconds, simply close your browser. All tabs, the lot. When prompted to restart windows or firefox, do not restore all opened tabs. Start again *from fresh* and hey presto, youtube will work as normal..